Multi-Frame Rendering is here! (AKA The multithreading you’ve been asking for)

[TeresaDemel]

Multi-frame Rendering is here for After Effects beta users. Right now, you will have access to Multi-Frame Rendering for export only. Keep your eye on this forum, as we will be rolling out new features until we launch.

Internally, we have been testing a representative sample of projects with a suite of hardware configurations, and we are excited to finally put this feature in your hands and get your feedback. Test your unique projects on your own hardware so we can ensure that our performance updates benefit all of our customers and meet speed and quality metrics before we launch.

Beta testing of Multi-Frame Rendering will last a little longer than some of our other features because we currently do not support Multi-Frame Rendering in Preview, Motion Graphics templates, Dynamic Link, Adobe Media Encoder and AERender Command Line Interface.

Check out the blog and FAQ post to learn the following:

• What is Multi-Frame Rendering?
• What factors influence performance?
• Which effects have been optimized for Multi-Frame Rendering?

Start Testing!
We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts and ideas in this forum.

• How much faster is Multi-Frame Rendering compared to Single-Frame Rendering with your comps on your machine?
• Does our benchmark project perform at the expected speed on your system?
• If you run into specific speed or quality issues with your project, share your project with us at mfrbeta@adobe.com.

Test Your Comps
Test your comps in Multi-Frame Render mode vs. Single-Frame Render

• Use Ae Render Queue to export your comp in Multi-Frame mode.
• Purge both the disk and memory cache, then
• Use Ae Render Queue to export your project in Single-Frame mode. Note: Use the same output module for Single-Frame and Multi-Frame mode. Go to Preferences -> Memory and Performance -> Enable Multi-Frame Rendering (beta) and uncheck the box to use Single-Frame Rendering Mode

Leave a comment and the following information in this forum:

• Your hardware specs: # cores in your CPU, GB of memory, GPU model and amount of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed (Use “Render Time” noted in your status bar)
• Multi-Frame render speed

If you detect any problems with render speed or quality, submit your projects

• Open your After Effects project
• File -> Dependencies -> Collect Files -> Collect -> Save As (Name Your Folder)
• After Effects will store your .aep file, footage, and text report (file log)
• Zip up your project and send it to us at mfrbeta@adobe.com (or send a link to it hosted on your creative cloud storage if it’s too large to email).

Share the following information in your comment:

• Your hardware specs: # cores in your CPU, GB of memory, GPU model and amount of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed (Use “Render Time” noted in your status bar)
• Multi-Frame render speed
• Mercury CPU or GPU Mode used

Test our benchmark project and see how your hardware compares
We would love to know how your hardware compares to the results we have gathered from our test suite:

To test the benchmark project on your machine:

• Download the benchmark project. 
• Use Ae Render Queue to export the benchmark project in Multi-Frame mode.
• Purge both the disk and memory cache, then
• Go to Preferences -> Memory and Performance -> Enable Multi-Frame Rendering (beta) and uncheck the box to use Single-Frame Rendering Mode
• Use Ae Render Queue to export the benchmark project in Single-Frame mode. Note: Use the same output module for Single-Frame and Multi-Frame mode.

Share the following information in this forum:

• Your hardware specs: # cores in your CPU, GB of memory, GPU model and amount of VRAM
• Single-Frame render speed
• Multi-Frame render speed

[RKahlenberg]

Your fastest drive is where you want to store your Media Files. These are files that will be used by AE most often - when previewing and rendering and doing anything in AE means AE has to pick up these files for processing.

Your second fastest drive is where you want to place AE's Cache. Reading from AE's Cache is essentially reading a single layer for playback. Hence, you do not require a super fast drive. If you're dealing with HD1080, then an SSD that reads/writes above 450 MBps will be sufficient.

Having written these, there may be a case to have a faster then 450MBps drive for cache since AE will be doing lots of writing to this drive, it makes sense to have a fast drive. Regardless, the fastest drive, as a general rule of thumb should go to your media+AE project files. And as already highlighted, separate Reading and Writing tasks to different physicals disks, to allow AE (or any app actually) to optimize its processes.

HTH

[stormWield]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! This is most helpful.

[Mark Paterson]

Mac Pro 2010

2 x 3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

12GB RAM

Radeon RX 580 8GB

macOS Mojave 10.14.6

AE Beta 22.0

Single frame speed = 27 minutes

Multi frame speed = 11 minutes 55 seconds

I've attached a screenshot showing CPU usage while rendering single frame and then multi frame. No prizes for guessing which order I did it in. The mac was responsive throughout. Very impressed!

[Mark Paterson]

^^^ TYPO ^^^ That should be 128GB of RAM, not 12GB.

Why can't we edit posts?

[jenkmeister]

Starting today in After Effects 22.0x28, when Multi-Frame Rendering is enabled in After Effects, any composition or speculative preview can now take advantage of Multi-Frame Rendering. The same performance improvements you've seen with Render Queue and AME to AE export, is now available in Preview. Please try it out and let us know how it's working for you!

One thing to know: Depending upon your project complexity and your system hardware, you may find a delay when starting a preview while MFR warms up. This is the same delay you experience with Render Queue Exports today. If that is a workflow blocker, simply turn off MFR until you're ready to export. Over the next few weeks we'll be rolling out improvements to Preview and Export that will reduce or remove that delay completely. We'll post here as those changes are available. 

In addition to MFR Preview, we have also updated the following plugins to support MFR:

• Keylight
• Bulge
• Minimax
• Color Balance HLS
• Levels
• Levels (Individual Controls)
• Bilateral Blur
• Cartoon
• Basic 3D
• Linear Color Key

More effects are being ported everyday, so if your favorite effect isn't ready yet, it should be soon. 

We've also rolled up our announcements so far into one blog post here: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/07/20/a-faster-after-effects-is-now-available-for-testing-new...

Thanks again for all your support, testing and contributions to After Effects!

Sean

[Rene Andritsch]

@jenkmeister Dear Sean, due to the multi-frame rendering in the Composition Preview (if enabled) is there currently a short delay when hitting the space bar for playback because it is initiated?

Thanks for implementing this great feature!

René

[jenkmeister]

Yes, there can be a delay due to the complexity of the project as MFR prepares for rendering it. We are in the final stages of removing that delay and hope to have that update into public beta in the next few weeks.

[Rene Andritsch]

Thank you, that sound great!

[chfilm]

Looking forward to the lag being removed, as of right now the preview is unusable 😄 This lag cancels out any advantage that MFR might bring to the process. But of course, when you can remove it, it's gonna be AMAZING! 🙂

[thejohnnyluu]

If there is the potential for MFR Preview lag even in the final release of this feature, have you considdered adding a switch for MFR in the composition and/or render queue panels so that we can turn it off and on as necessary without having to open up preferences?

[jenkmeister]

There won't be lag in the final release. The plan is MFR on for everyone and everything and it working smoothly so the preference to turn it off should hopefully never need to be used.

Internally we are testing the changes that remove the lag and just working on fixing some edge cases. It's a fundamental change to how AE structures and manages the project during render, so it's been a very long process to get this ready, but we are just a few weeks from rolling this change out to public beta. 

I've attached a quick video showing preview without the lag. Without the fixes we are finishing up, this project takes about 30 seconds before playback starts. With the fixes, you can see it is instant. 

[moley.tv]

thejohnnyluu makes a good point. That could be applied to much beyond MFR.

In general changing things in preferences tends to be a real workflow brake. Any settings that can be kept out of the preferences UI ( which can be slow to operate) will generally speed up workflow. 

My wishlist of things that could be changed with a keyboard shortcut without having to dig through and save preferences would inlude:

• Video Preview - Mercury Transmit
• Audio Hardware changes - although this is much improved now 🙂
• Default spacial interpretation to linear
• Sequence footage default framerate

Off-topic I know, but thought I'd share. x

[Joy Raisinghani]

Hello Beta Users,

Starting today with build 22.0x32, we have updated AE Mocha plugin to support Multi-Frame Rendering. We cannot wait to hear your feedback and experience using this plugin.

Please let us know any issues you run into at mfrbeta@adobe.com

[Rene Andritsch]

@Joy Raisinghani my first test resulted in several difficulties. When scrubbing in the new version I get an “Unknown Error” before being able to scrub properly. Maybe due to the MFR initiation. Then trying to track a rather simple patch the track aborts prematurely. No problems in AE 17.7.0. I will send a screen capture video and a link zo the project file to the provided e-mail address.

[piggypeeler]

Exported Apple Pro Res 444

Threadripper 64 core / 256gb ram / rtx3080ti / Windows 10 64bit

Single Frame:  15:50

Multi Frame:  4:40

[jenkmeister]

Dynamic Composition Analysis going live in AE Beta 22.0x52

After many months of testing internally, we are excited to roll out another piece of the Multi-Frame Rendering feature to beta. Starting with AE Beta 22.0x52, MFR will now utilize a feature we call Dynamic Composition Analysis. It's a fancy name, but it's also a fancy feature. 🙂

With Dynamic Composition Analysis, MFR will now adjust the number of concurrent frames being rendered based on the complexity of the frames in the composition and the available system resources. Rather than a fixed, maximum, number of concurrent frames, you'll see the concurrent frame count move up and down throughout the render to ensure the composition is rendering as fast as possible at all times. This may mean the concurrent frames drops below the amount you've seen over the past few months (that's an indication that MFR can render faster overall by rendering less frames at the same time). You may also see concurrency levels go above what you've been seeing. (On 64 core machines with simple projects, we've seen as high as 92 concurrent frames.)

All that to say, you should now see your renders finish faster. It may not be orders of magnitudes faster, but it should be faster. Please let us know if it isn’t for you and your project.

We still have a few more optimizations coming in the next few weeks, including the fix for the delay everyone is noticing with preview, so stay tuned!

Thanks!

Sean

[Kes Akalaonu]

How does this affect playback and the Speculative Preview update from yesterday?

[jenkmeister]

Playback will also take advantage of Dynamic Composition Analysis in the same way export does. Speculative Preview is, by design, limited to a small amount of concurrent frames (by default 1/8th of your CPU Core count) and won't use DCA. 

[Szalam]

It's so great to see all these important, huge things coming so thick and fast these days!

[balanced_kid15A7]

Loving the updates, seems like the biggest one in a while! I am wondering if there will be a better integration for ACES colorspace in 3D sequence renders. Currently, it's pretty cumbersome and it would be pretty great to make this more streamlined. As it stands, once that ACES content in imported, other steps have to be made to comp it properly (OCIO to sRGB adjustment layer, then another Color Profile Converter Adj Layer on top of that, following Zaks workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGC8k2gbS1s&t=949s). Some of the time I am guessing whether or not I am actually seeing my ACEScg renders as they should be within AE. I understand there are limitations here and there, but to make that process easier would be awesome. Not sure if this was already brought up, did a quick search and doesn't seem to be a topic yet here.

[hellopaul4]

Hmmm...I was hoping to see some improvement in rendering speed with the latest AE updates, but running that same test on version 22.0.0 (Build 58) gave slightly slower results than before, despite up to 13 frames being renderd simultaneously. My previous best time was 3m 23s a few months back; on the latest version it's increased by 6secs to 3m 29s. I wonder if it's simply because my PC was very new back then, and a few months of Windoze updates and other software installs has slowed it down, as seems to be the way of things? It'd be interesting if a few people who ran the original test would run it again to see how their results may have changed.

• AMD 5950X 16-core (in 'auto-overclock' mode)
• 128GB Patriot RAM at 3200MHz (the RAM is specced at 3600MHz, but my system refuses to run it that fast)
• Asus ROG STRIX RTX3090 with 24GB VRAM
• GPU rendering on, multi core on

[obio773188]

Will this be also supported in aerender?

[jenkmeister]

Multi-Frame Rendering works with aerender now, it will turn on if the preference is enabled in the AE UI. I'm literally writing the code today to allow aerender to turn it on and off independently though. So, yes 🙂 

[obio773188]

Awesome 8)  - any updates on the "AEGetParamPt failed" error?

[jenkmeister]

Here's what we know:

* The issue occurs on MacOS only, and on newer OS releases that have received recent security updates from Apple. 

* The security update changes means we need to alter the structure of aerender and how it starts up aerendercore on Mac to render the frames. 

* We have two possible solutions, both of which we are in development on. One may get aerender working sooner but it's got the potential to break again in the future, and so the other is a longer-term fix but may have implications about how aerender is executed which we are working through.

We hope to have at least one of those fixes in place in the next few weeks. We are working with Apple closely to understand their changes to make sure we get this right. More updates as soon as we have them. Thank you for your patience!

Thanks,

Sean